He did not seek to San Domingoize the South, and against this he provided penalties in his prepared provisional constitution.(99)
Brown had been encouraged and materially aided by Gerritt Smith, Dr. Howe of Boston, Stearns, Sanborn, Frederick Douglass, Higginson, Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and others of less renown; some, if not all, of whom had neither understood nor approved of his plan of attack.
The slaves did not rise, not did they in any considerable number even know at the time the real purpose of their would-be liberator.
During the excitement of the first news Greeley prophetically wrote:
"We deeply regret this outbreak; but remembering if their fault was grievous, grieviously have they answered for it, we will not by one reproachful word disturb the bloody shrouds wherein John Brown and his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be right, though in a manner which seems to us to be fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the not distant day when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello or by the graves of Mount Vernon."(100)
Brown's raid did not seriously, as was then expected, affect the November elections of that year, and they were favorable to the young, aggressive Republican party, formed to stay the extension of slavery.
It is not the purpose here to write a detailed history of particular events, only to name such as had a substantial effect on slavery; yet John Brown's fate should be recorded. He was captured October 18th; indicted on October 20th; arraigned and put on his trial at Charlestown, in Jefferson County, Virginia, though his open wounds were still bleeding; and on October 31, 1859, a jury brought in a verdict finding him "Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel; and murder in the first degree." Save in the matter of precipitation, his trial was fair, under all the circumstances, and no other result could have been expected. November 2 he was sentenced to be hung on December 2, 1859.
When arraigned for sentence, among other things he said:
"If it is deemed necessary I should forfeit my life in furtherance of the end of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust exactments, I say, let it be done."
A little later he wrote: